Streetsmart News, Vol. 4, 2017

Evidence and Insight for Better Transportation

USER ADVISORY GROUP

Interested in shaping the beta version of Streetsmart? We’re creating an interdisciplinary user advisory group to provide feedback on the usability and functionality of Streetsmart. Whether you are a planner, engineer, public health professional, advocate, researcher, or elected official, we want your insight. We will have two conference calls that will provide an opportunity to discuss your current frustrations with finding the evidence you need as well as examine other tools and resources that can help you get the information you want. Contact Kelly@thinkstreetsmart.org if you are interested in participating.

If you haven't yet explored the Streetsmart prototype or taken our survey, now is your chance!

EXPLORE OUR SITE

CONTEXT MATTERS

Streetsmart is looking at how to integrate contextual issues by tagging resources by implementation issues such as city/region size and by region of the country. We are also doing research on place type—how it is defined and what it means in terms of community goals such as VMT reduction and walking. Usually researchers parse the built environment by things like the “D” variables—density, design, diversity, access to destinations, and distance to transit. But as civic leaders know, places are more than just a collection of independent variables. Furthermore, when these variables are bundled into place they interact and may have synergies.

Want to know more? We’ll be talking about place type at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in January. In the meantime, you can geek out on place type, among other things, by reading this SHRP2 Project report, The Effect of Smart Growth Policies on Travel Demand.

QUALITY OF EVIDENCE

The standards and guidebooks invoked to justify transportation decisions rely on a variety of data sources, some of which are dated, not context-specific, nor account for complex interactions identified in the research literature. On the other end of the spectrum, many evidence protocols promote a “gold standard” of evidence biased toward the use of randomized control trials to establish causality. This evidence standard, created for a bio-medical environment, is not appropriate for city and transportation planning. So, this begs the question: what is an appropriate standard of evidence for transportation planning?

We’ll have a poster at Active Living Research Annual Conference that discusses the challenges of establishing evidence quality for the messy reality of urban environments. Interested in the subject? Check out What Works at County Health Rankings & Roadmaps for their evaluation criteria (and lots of other great info at the intersection of health and transportation).

WHY STREETSMART?

We get it. Civic leaders struggle to find the evidence they need to evaluate and prioritize transportation investments. The research is scattered, time-consuming to find, and difficult to digest. We do all the work of synthesizing the research and presenting in an intuitive and easy-to-use format, without compromising quality or rigor.

Civic leaders need to make the case for solutions that work best for their community, which sometimes requires defending innovation. Streetsmart reduces risk by providing the evidence and examples of what works in other communities. We’ve got your back.

Find success stories with key lessons learned in one easy-to-search place. Why re-invent the wheel? Streetsmart offers insight via case studies and guidebooks relevant to each topic area. Learn from others in the trenches working on issues similar to yours.

Want to participate in the User Advisory Group? Get in touch to participate and network with peers working on the same issues are you.
Got more feedback about the prototype? Take the survey or drop us a line to give us your insight.
Looking for a transportation internship? Help us collect resources and case studies on a topic of your choosing.

We are always looking for academic and practitioner collaborators to build and refine Streetsmart. Talk to Kelly at Kelly@thinkstreetsmart.org to explore the opportunities.

Streetsmart Planning | Kelly@thinkstreetsmart.org

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